I can relate to this easily. A girl in my class died last year from heart surgery. We never really got along with each other, and the things we said were not kind. When I found out she died, I was devastated, and heart broke that I would never get the chance to say sorry for the things I had done to her. That night, I wrote a letter to her, saying things of apology, and that it was sincere, I tied it to a helium balloon and set it free on a windy day. At the time, I still believed that there was someplace that you go after you die, I hoped that she got it, wherever she was. Now that I’m a little older I see that it was a silly thing to do, but it made me feel good to think that she might still have gotten the apology I owed her.

That exercise you did, writing her a note and sailing it away on a balloon, was very profound. Sometimes our gestures of good, even when they don’t impact the person they were originally intended for, have great power. It reminds me of the exercise where a person writes down everything they want to let go of and then crumbles up the sheet of paper and tosses it in the garbage. That sort of thing doesn’t work for everyone all the time, but it can be a really effective technique for using a symbolic ritual as a way of releasing negative energy. As I imagined that note and balloon floating away, I also imagined that your spirit was saying “goodbye” to those attitudes and feelings that no longer suited the maturer person you had become.

Condolences regarding your friend and kudos to you for being open to such a profound life lesson.